and this week he is to embark in the last vessel that is to sail this year for Quebec. He is a very good scholar and writer, and a worthy man, and I think will do credit to this first appointment. He is to reside, and to have with that the other two provinces of New Brunswick and Canada for his diocese. The interest of the money left by different people for an American Episcopate will be about 500l. annually, and it is expected that Government will add 500l. more. In the Dublin paper you sent me, that very properly announced his appointment, there was a curious letter relative to the deprivation of some minister by the General Assembly of Scotland; in which sentence they seem to acknowledge no supreme head of their Church but King James. This ought to be better known, if the fact is literally so; but Dr. Beattie, to whom I got a friend to shew this letter, said, 'This man talks like an Irishman, and knows nothing of the Church of Scotland.' I am not satisfied with this answer, and, as I am going in a day or two to the Bishop of Chester's,* in Kent, where Beattie is, I will have this matter explained.

"If you have not been already informed, you will be surprised to hear that the little pamphlet you sent me, drawn up by a Popish priest† as the reasons of his conversion, is taken verbatim from the following:- A Brief Account of the Motives and Reasons of the Conversion of the Rev. Mr. Thomas Harly, A.M. late a priest of the Church of Rome, who publicly renounced the errors of the Church of Rome at the parish church of St. Peter, Dublin, Sunday, Sept. 8, 1765.' London, 8vo. 14 pages closely printed. The little pamphlet is about half of this.

"Here are some squibs let off against Dr. Priestley, under the character of Jews, to whom he addressed some letters; but are not worth sending. I shall forward to Mr. Ley's a paper with an impudent letter of O'Leary's, whom a Mr.Curran, ‡ I think in your House of Commons, so extravagantly commends.

"Your Lordship's ever faithful

"To Lord Bishop of Dromore, Dublin."

*Bishop Porteus.

By Mr. Wharton. See before, p. 485.

M. LORT.

John Philpot Curran, died Oct. 14, 1817, aged nearly 70. moir of him in Gentleman's Magazine, LXXVII. ii. 371, 638.

See a me

BISHOP PERCY to the REV. DR. LOrt.

"DEAR SIR,

Dromore House, 2nd March, 1788.

Upon looking over my memorandums, I find it is just five months since I wrote to you (viz. Oct. 2) without ever hearing that you received my letter, which makes me apprehensive that either it hath miscarried, or that you have been ill indeed, if from various avocations you have delayed writing to me, I have no right to complain, who have more guilt of that sort to answer for than anybody. I hope, however, soon to hear that you and Mrs. Lort enjoy good health, and that, only deferring, you do not mean to deprive me of the pleasure of your correspondence. This hath been a very unhealthy winter in my own family. I was confined with a feverish cold almost the whole month of January; otherwise I generally enjoy good health. But Mrs. Percy was seized at the beginning of December with a bilious fever of the most alarming and dangerous kind, which confined her to her chamber more than two months, and she has not yet wholly recovered from its malignity; which hath prevented me from attending Parliament hitherto, and we are now beginning only to look towards Dublin. Otherwise I should have been sending you some of the productions of the day, particularly a pamphlet written by Mr. Browne, member for the University, to vindicate the legislature and government of Ireland from a charge, which has passed uncontradicted, of their having violated the articles of Limerick granted by king William to the Roman Catholics at the termination of the war in 1691. But you shall have it, with some other things of that sort, when once I reach our metropolis. You are all, I suppose, so busied with the trial of Mr. Hastings, that you have no other subject to communicate. I wanted to hear from you, inter alia, to congratulate you and all good men on the promotion of Dr. Porteus to the bishopric of London, where he will do infinite good. Two abuses of a most destructive tendency, especially to youth, want to be reformed in that corrupt

* Dr. Porteus was elected Bishop of Chester in 1777; and translated to London in 1787. He presented Dr. Lort to the sinecure rectory of Fulham in 1789; and died May 14, 1809, at Ide Hill, in the parish of Sundridge, Kent. See a view of Ide Hill Chapel, founded by Bishop Porteus, and a view of his tomb, in Gent. Mag. 1814, ii. 577.

metropolis. Though difficult to cure, I will not despair of it from its excellent diocesan: the one, if I may credit the papers, has already attracted his notice-I mean the removal of common prostitutes from all the most frequented streets, &c. The other I wish were recommended to his notice, viz. to suppress the corrupt and inflammatory prints and publications which, in the cheapest forms, are obtruded upon youth in every stall and window of the booksellers' and print shops, to the universal corruption and destruction of the rising generation. From that great common shore (I believe I should write sewer) the baleful streams are diffused through the whole kingdom, and every libidinous pamphlet or novel is lent out to hire in petty circulating libraries in every little dirty town in England. When I was dean of Carlisle, our remote bookseller had received a cargo of all the adulterous trials, with indecent prints, &c. the volumes of which he had taken to pieces, to accommodate the more easily and expeditiously all his circulating customers. I really thought it my duty to interpose, and partly by remonstrance, and partly by threatening to put in execution laws (which by the bye I fear did not, but ought to exist), I got them, and all books of that sort, removed out of his shop and catalogue at least, and he promised me they should not be lent or sold to any one. I hope he kept his promise; but, if not altogether, he no longer obtruded them on the unsoliciting eye. Would to God something of this kind could be effected at the fountain-head! And, if vile books cannot wholly be prevented from existing, at least they should not stare the modest reader in the face, as I think you and I have heretofore lamented. The perusal of such vile publications by milliners' apprentices, &c. in the circulating libraries of every little town is the general preparation for the brothels in London; so that the checking this enormity would probably go far to prevent the other. Believe me, dear friend, your most affectionate and faithful servant, THO. DROMOre.

"N.B.-The success which attended the good Bishop of London's exertions to revive the religious observance of Good Friday makes me despair of nothing which his Lordship shall deem a proper subject for his animated pen and zealous attention."

DR. LORT TO BISHOP PERCY.

"MY DEAR LORD,

London, April 17, 1788. "I take shame to myself for having so long neglected writing to your Lordship; but you are not the only one of my correspondents who have to upbraid me on that score. The truth is, that I cannot think of writing to so good and so distant a friend on less than three folio sides of paper; and that idea has often deterred me from sitting down to write, when I supposed I had not time before me to scribble half as much. This winter, though not a severe one, yet has passed more heavily with me than any preceding one. The cold air and easterly winds affected my breath so much that I scarce have been able to stir abroad but in a carriage, nor to breathe freely but by the fireside, and for some hours after I am up. Then I have been prevented, by frequent calls and interruptions, from reading or writing much; and in the evening my eyes will not hold out to do much in either way. I should not have said so much about myself was it not by way of some sort of apology for my long silence. I am sorry to find so bad an account given of the health of your own family, and particularly that of your better half. It is to be hoped that the spring advancing will set us all right again, and restore us that blessing without which all other blessings are tasteless and insipid. Compared to that, I think lightly of every thing else the world calls blessings. So that I have viewed the great variety of Church preferments lately vacant, and the struggle for them, with much indifference; and expecting nothing, and scarcely desiring any thing on my own account, I have not been disappointed.

"The Bishop of London is in better health than I remember him for some time past. His present diocese will be less troublesome to him than the last. The nuisances in the metropolis you recommend to his notice, he has not been inattentive to. That, more particularly, of indecent books and prints, you and I, who have rummaged so many bookstalls, must be more acquainted with than most others of our profession. The Archbishop put the late proclamation into my hands before it was printed, and gave me leave to insert a particular clause relative to them; and partly on my complaint, and at my instigation, the parish of St. Martin's prosecuted a notorious vender of this poison at the quarter sessions, where he was con

victed, and only fined 13s. 4d. So I suppose he is got to his old trade again.

"Among the numbers of our brethren who have succeeded lately in the Church, I dare say your Lordship was pleased to see our friend Farmer. His stall at St. Paul's is 1000l. a year. So he is soon to bring a lady with him, -Miss Hatton, one of the late Sir T. Hatton's seven daughters, with whom he has been many years acquainted, and it is supposed, connected. I think she has 5000l. fortune. When the Bishoprick of St. David's became vacant, it was strongly suspected that the Bishop of Ferns* was to be translated to it: but that the Minister, finding this would open a door to perpetual solicitations of the same sort, abstained from doing this. Bishop Preston dined with me yesterday, and talks of returning soon to Ireland, and bringing a good library with him. How comes it about that so good a collection of books as the late Dr. Wm. Martin's, of Killeshandra, should not find purchasers in Ireland, but that the proprietors should send it here to be sold by auction? The catalogue shows it to have been the collection of a divine, a gentleman, and a scholar.

"The papers thought proper to announce me as one of Mr. George Jenyns' executors; it is not true: but Mr. C. Cole, whom they named as the other, will republish his works in 4 vols. 8vo. The additional pieces are, some poems, among which Latin lyric odes, written in his youth, an essay on the national debt, and some comments on or expositions of passages of the New Testament.

"Mr. Bruce's MS. Travels are in town to be printed in 3 volumes, 4to. with many copper plates. You know it has been much the fashion to doubt the relations this gentleman has given, at different times, in different companies; and in some late publications sarcastic observations to this purpose have appeared, particularly in a 4to. book published last winter at Dublin by Mr. Walker on the Irish Bards.†

"I take for granted that you have read Dr. Johnson's Correspondence, published by Mrs. Piozzi; and, though you might not have been sorry to have read the whole, yet I wish, for the Doctor's sake, that only half of it had

* Dr. Preston, see p. 462.

+ Memoirs of the Irish Bards, by Joseph Cooper Walker, esq. 4to. 1786. See Monthly Review, LXXVII. 425.